Teens learn to stand up to bullying

By Andrea Howry, Lighthouse editor

11:37 AM, May 29, 2013

Kecia Ciccotti, the teen coordinator for the Naval Base Ventura County teen centers at Point Mugu, Port Hueneme and Camarillo, looks over an anti-bullying poster and one of the paper butterflies made for the Museum of Tolerance’s Butterfly Project, which recognizes the 1.5 million children and teens who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

Photo by Andrea Howry / Lighthouse

It happens every day in America —every 7 seconds, in fact.

A boy on the playground is teased for having a belly. A girl walking home gets a nasty text message. A third-grader suddenly doesn’t want to go to school one morning, and Mom can’t figure out why. An eighth-grader begs to be driven to his first-period class; he’s afraid he’ll be punched on the bus.

At Naval Base Ventura County, teenagers are saying, “Enough.”

Working with a curriculum sponsored by the Bully Project, a campaign inspired by the 2011 documentary “Bully,” nearly two dozen teenagers who regularly visit the teen centers at Point Mugu, Port Hueneme and the Catalina Heights housing complex in Camarillo are learning what it takes to stop what too many adults still think is harmless banter and joking around.

Coordinator Kecia Ciccotti is running the program that has included a screening of the documentary, discussions about being an “upstander” as opposed to a “bystander,” the impact of cyberbullying and a trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

“Some of this has been very emotional,” said Ciccotti. “Someone broke down watching the documentary, and others started crying when we talked about it afterwards.

“I think it’s awesome that they have that heart — that they recognize that this is a problem and that they can do something about it.”

Ciccotti believes that teens are more aware of the problem than their parents and educators, many of whom survived bullying themselves and figure the kids can too.

Then again, she adds, there are plenty of teens who also don’t stand up to bullies, mostly because they’ve been victimized for so long they don’t even know what bullying is anymore.

“Moreover, many parents have no idea about cyberbullying and how extensive it is,” Ciccotti said. “We talk a lot about that — about harmful texts and how to deal with them.”

Ciccotti has been the teen coordinator for about nine months. A Navy spouse, she spent 11 years teaching seventh and eighth graders in New York and Connecticut, where she experienced bullying firsthand nearly every day of the week.

“Bullying was the norm,” she said. “I taught in an urban environment, where there was drug and alcohol use in the sixth grade, where many families had at least one parent in jail. There were huge challenges.”

She agrees that Ventura County isn’t inner-city New York, but she bristles when asked if the topic of bullying and its Ultimate Form — the Holocaust — might be too sensitive for a 13-year-old who just wants to hang out at a Naval Base Ventura County Teen Center.

“I think we have a social obligation to help today’s kids,” she said. “This isn’t just a place to chill after school. We can do our part to foster social interaction, leadership and character development. We can have conversations about this, and we can address their concerns in something more than a 5-minute chat after school.”

Nineteen teens who were on spring break from school traveled with Teen Center staff to the Museum of Tolerance in early April. When they returned, they worked on their additions to the Butterfly Project, an effort by the museum to collect 1.5 million paper butterflies to represent the 1.5 million children and teens who lost their lives in the Holocaust.